I was a boring, average human being who didn't claim a sixth sense, a high sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, or an attic that was a portal to the gates of Hell. I sat quietly in the darkened room with nothing to do but contemplate my boringness.
Over winter break I took a class called Spirits in the House. For two and a half hours every Monday, I explored the depths and heights of Memorial Union Theater, hoping to unlock the secrets of the past and develop the skills all good ghost hunters need.
This Monday I was in the projection booth with Tom, an older man who claimed to have a deep spiritual connection, and recording equipment that could pick up even the faintest ghostly whisper.
So far that connection had brought us nothing, and the audio equipment amplified background noise until it gave me a headache. Unimpressed, I struck up a conversation.
Tom had worked at a haunted hotel. Though he had never had anything happen to him, nothing had ever happened in the three years he worked there, and no one had ever died at this hotel, he absolutely knew a spirit dwelt there. After all, a hundred years ago there had been an insane asylum four miles down the road. That had to count for something, right?
The rest of the class seemed to be right up Tom's alley. Out of the 12 of us, 11 claimed to have had paranormal experiences."" I was shunned from the group, being a non-believer who was ghost hunting for shits and giggles.
But, for being the non-believer who spent most of the class period day-dreaming about getting ice cream at the Daily Scoop after class, I tended to see results that my classmates didn't.
When I had fallen asleep in the projection booth, the lights began flashing on and off. When I asked them to stop, they did. None of my classmates experienced the same phenomenon. Eerie, but I chalked it up to crappy wiring in the aging theater.
Another Monday I was in the trap room, which is below the stage and by far the creepiest of the rooms we were investigating. Another girl and I were sitting in the dark when we both started to get sick to our stomachs. There was one area of the room where we would both get terribly cold, sick to our stomachs and had that paranoid feeling someone was watching you. Within a half hour, it passed. We noted it, but I was still skeptical that anything paranormal was happening.
But one night as I enjoyed my long-awaited ice cream and listened to the night's audio recordings, I felt a chill that no ice cream headache could induce. There, on the tape, clear as the night sky, was a whispered, ""Get out!""
Or maybe it was ""Pig snout""? ""I have gout""? When I say it was as clear as the night sky, I mean it was about as clear as the mid-afternoon air over L.A.
Regardless of what or who was making the noise, my classmates were very interested in the non-believer now. I asked how we should follow this up. They scoffed at me, poor fool that I am. Clearly the next step was to have a séance.
Maybe it was my inexperience, but I don't believe our séance was successful. Absolutely nothing happened. No chains rattled, no objects flew off shelves; we didn't even get ectoplasm spewed in our faces.
When I could stare silently at candles no more, I turned to the boy sitting next to me and asked if he wanted to go get some ice cream with me.
The boy - a more pale and sad looking one I have never seen - sadly declined. Apparently he hadn't been out of the trap room for what seemed like decades. I told him I felt the same; this stupid séance was taking forever. He laughed softly, then quietly got up and walked away through the wall. Oh well, more ice cream for me.
If you love ghost hunting, or better yet, ice cream, e-mail Megan at mcorbett2@wisc.edu.
